GPP Leverage: Week 8

Welcome back for the eighth NFL GPP Leverage column of the season. If you missed the Week 1 edition of GPP Leverage, I recommend you take a minute to read the intro from Week 1 to get a feel for the goals of this column. 

The Week 7 main slate was one of the most bizarre main slates I can remember from a results perspective. Of the players owned in the 27,777-entry $100 DraftKings Milly Maker:

• Only three QBs eclipsed 20 fantasy points, and they were all sub-5% owned (Josh Allen, Jalen Hurts, and Brock Purdy)
• The three highest-scoring players on the slate were RBs, and they were all sub-10% owned (Jahmyr Gibbs, Saquon Barkley, Joe Mixon)
• Only one WR eclipsed 22 fantasy points and he was sub-10% owned (Amon-Ra St. Brown)

Meanwhile, of the eight most-owned WRs on the slate, three recorded zero points and only two managed to score more than 10 points. As a result of all of the chaos, the chalk failed massively and contrarian teams were able to float to the top of leaderboards. Let’s take a look at the winning lineup from the $100 Milly Maker, which won by a whopping 12 points over second place.

I want to highlight this winning lineup because it demonstrates that, even in a contest with nearly 28K entries, our lineups don’t have to be perfect to win. This lineup took an absolute zero from a WR slot and still won by such a large margin that it could have also taken a zero at Flex. Sometimes a lot of the chalk will absolutely smash, but when it doesn’t, such as in Week 7, all we need to win is to successfully find a few contrarian options to gain leverage against the field. If our leverage plays hit, we can afford to play some chalk around them and don’t have to be perfect across the board.

And that brings us to the point of this column. This week in Leverage, we’ll go position-by-position to parse through the chalk and explore where we can gain leverage against the field on the Week 8 main slate.

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QB